250 Things You Should Know About Writing Read Free Page B

of the floor, dude, that's real, WE GOTTA FUCKING GO."
     
10. Escape The Gravity Of The Hate Spiral
    Every 10,000 words is a new peak or valley on this crazy-ass roller coaster ride. You loved the novel last week. This week you want to punch its teeth down its throat. That's normal. Write through it. The hate spiral will kill you in if you let it. It's one of the reasons we abandon novels. It's also nonsense. Sometimes your best work is your worst, your worst is your best. Everything is ass-end up. Fuck worry. Just write.
     
11. QFT
    The other day on Twitter, the author J. Robert King said something that rang true: "No balanced person writes a novel." You sit down at the desk, shackle your mind to the project, wade into an imaginary swamp with made-up people. For days. Weeks. Sometimes even years. That's fucking batty.
     
12. Gotta Abandon Your Baby? Butcher Him For Spare Parts
    Don't abandon your novel. Don't do it. Don't make me kick you in the nuts. There. I did it. I kicked your nuts. Taste that? In your mouth? Them's your nuts. Still. Sometimes it's going to happen. Hopefully not often, but it does: a novel just isn't working. Fine.
Fine
. But don't let it go without a fight. Chop it apart. Break it into its constituent parts. You put work into that. Take what works and apply it elsewhere. Build another robot using parts you stole from yourself. Eat your body to sustain your body.
     
13. You Can Write A Novel Pretty Fucking Fast
    It's hard but not impossible to write, say, 5,000 words a day. A novel is roughly 80k. At 5k/day, you can finish a novel in about 16 days. Just know that it won't be good. Not yet. Can't write
and rewrite
that fast.
     
14. For Fuck's Sake, Say Something
    A reader is going to spend those 80,000 words with you. Hours of his life, given to you. Make them count. Say something about anything. Have your novel
mean
something to you so it can mean something to them. Bring your guts and brains and passion and heart and for the sake of sweet Sid and Marty Krofft, a
message
to the table. Don't just write. Write
about
something. Do more than entertain. You're not a dancing monkey. You're a storyteller, motherfucker. Embrace that responsibility.
     
15. The Shape Of The Page Matters
    A novel page shouldn't look like a giant wall of text. Nor should it look like an e.e. cummings poem. The shape of the page matters. Balance. Equal parts emptiness and text. Void meets substance.
     
16. A Novel By The Numbers
    The ideal novel is 48% action, 48% dialogue, and 4% exposition and description. I just made that up. Probably totally inaccurate.
Possibly
I might could maybe sorta be drunk right now. Drunk on words, or on Tito's Vodka ?
You decide
. Point is, a novel gets bogged by boggy bullshit like heavy description and blathering exposition. A novel is best when it lives in the moment, when its primary mode of communication is
action
and
dialogue
linking arms and dancing all over the reader's face.
     
17. I Just Lied To You Back There, And For That, I'm Sorry
    Dialogue
is
action. It's not separate from it. It
is
it. Action is doing something. Dialogue is talking, and talking is doing something. Even better when dialogue manifests while characters do shit: drive a car, execute some baddies, make an omelet, build a sinister dancing robot whose mad mechanical choromania will reduce the world to cinders. Characters don't just stand in one place in space and talk. They're not puppets in community theater. Find language with movement and motion.
     
18. Description Is About Signal To Noise
    Description is best when subtle. Too much description is static. Paint in short strokes. A pinch of spice here. A delicate garnish there. Description is not a hammer with which to bludgeon the mooing herd. Pick one, two, or three details and stop there. I've heard this said about large breasts and we'll reiterate it here for description: anything more than a mouthful is a waste.
     
19. The Reader Is Your Mule
    Up to you whether